HE was the self-proclaimed Teen Wolf of Wall Street who claimed to have made tens of millions of dollars by trading stocks on his school lunch break.

But, in a shocking twist, Mohammed Islam now says he and his friend made the whole thing up after they were swept up in a media frenzy.

Islam’s hoax was so elaborate and well-crafted, he managed to fool New York magazine, which reported that the 17-year-old student from Stuyvesant High in Queens was worth a rumoured $US72 million.

The too-good-to-be-true story of the whiz kid trader was quickly followed up by other media outlets.

Islam and his “colleague” Damir Tulemaganbetov were booked to appear on the CNBNC TV show Half-Time Report before suddenly pulling the pin after they went into a state of panic upon realising they had taken it too far.

“We expected a regular article about what we hope to do” in our career, he told the New York Observer. “The way we were portrayed is not who we are.”

Islam, the son of Bengali immigrants, told the New York Observer he was contacted by New York magazine reporter Jessica Pressler, who broke the initial story, after she got his details from a co-worker who knew the teen.

His friend Damir Tulemaganbetov told the New York Observer the pair had stayed up all night as the story broke, “checking out news all over the world”.

“Socially, people will be mad about it,” Tulemaganbetov told the Observer.

“But we’re sorry. Especially to our parents. Like my dad would read this and be like ‘Oh My God’ because he’s a very humble man and I portrayed him like a bad father.”

New York magazine defended its reporting in a statement.

“The article portrays the $72 million figure only as a rumour; we changed the headline on the story to reflect more clearly the fact that we did not know the exact figure of how much he had made in trades,” the statement said.

“The story itself does not specify an amount. However, Mohammed provided bank statements that showed he is worth eight figures; he confirmed on the record that he’s worth eight figures,” it said.